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Poll: Voters prefer Republican budget ideas, but dislike GOP

Presented in that way, 55 percent of likely voters opted for a plan that would slash $5 trillion in government spending, provide for no additional tax revenue and balance the budget within 10 years — in essence, the path recommended by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) last week.

This was almost twice as many voters as opted for a proposal that would include $1 trillion in added tax revenue as well as $100 billion in infrastructure spending, and which would reduce the deficit without eradicating it.

An even stronger majority of respondents, 65 percent, said U.S. budget deficits should be reduced mostly by cutting spending rather than by raising taxes. Just 24 percent said the budget should be balanced mostly by increasing revenue.

Blowback

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There is a huge percentage of our population that has been conditioned and brainwashed to hate the Republican party. Our media and public school system is almost entirely to blame for this.

It doesn’t matter what the issue is. If people know the Republicans are against it they are for it and visa versa. I see it all the time in California. Seemingly smart people who know and understand how costly illegal immigration is and how bad the teacher’s union is for our schools continually vote for Democrats or don’t vote at all. They would never ever pull the lever for a Republican it is so ingrained in their brain.

Could it be that lots of voters think the GOP is a bunch of old white guys who hate gays, Latinos, and anyone else who isn’t rich?

Fair or not, I think that has something to do with it.

The GOP needs to stop pandering to socons – and they need to EXPLAIN what they want to do in terms ordinary, low-info types can understand and get behind. Stop assuming voters understand basic economics. They don’t.

The Dems want to split people up and pit them against each other? Fine. Let’s explain how the fat cats on Wall Street and the Democrats feed in each others’ troughs. In other words, pit ordinary Americans struggling to get buy against the fat cats in DC and their big bank buddies.

Explain how limited government helps the little guy, not the rich guy. Make it so it’s not just about the white NASCAR fan, but the black inner cities, Hispanics. Talk TO gays. Talk TO women.

And for crying out loud, stop it with the ideological purity purges. That’s how we got stuck with our only choice being Mitt effing Romney and a room-temperature-IQ nitwit in a sweater vest.

There are many reasons for this(media bias, public school indoctrination, a large portion of the electorate made up of morons), but one thing that should be within the GOP’s control is putting forth spokespeople who can actually articulate conservative principles in an appealing way. Seriously, it’s not that difficult. Ben Carson who isn’t even a freaking politican manages to do it effortlessly.

But when we have incoherent buffoons like Boehner, Cantor, McConnell, McCain, Grahamnesty, and Ayotte as our public faces, it’s no wonder even voters who would ordinarly be receptive to the conservative message are tuning out.

The GOP needs to stop pandering to socons – and they need to EXPLAIN what they want to do in terms ordinary, low-info types can understand and get behind. Stop assuming voters understand basic economics. They don’t.

It’s not SoCons that condemned 47% of Americans, bub.

Economic conservatives need to realize that they are the reason the party is despised, because they can’t make a case without communicating their disdain for the working man.

And the marketing arm of the Democrat Party is the Media, period. It’s a battle we can’t and won’t win…We could all of the sudden change our platform to pro everything (gay marriage, tax the rich, solar investments-virtually everything the dems now push)and it would and won’t get us any more votes…period..when the state controls the media, the game is all but over for the opposition (us)….

Tell me, how do you think you will replace the 20 million or so religious voters once you’ve purged them from the party? Or do you think they’ll keep voting GOP (or even keep voting) if you tell them that not only do their concerns not matter but are a net loss to the country?

There are ways of promoting the concerns that social conservatives have (reinforcing families, protecting life, etc) without sounding like a theocrat. And I say this as a pro-life Catholic social conservative who is also a fiscal hawk and national defense hawk.

And the marketing arm of the Democrat Party is the Media, period. It’s a battle we can’t and won’t win…We could all of the sudden change our platform to pro everything (gay marriage, tax the rich, solar investments-virtually everything the dems now push)and it would and won’t get us any more votes…period..when the state controls the media, the game is all but over for the opposition (us)….

Tim Zank on March 18, 2013 at 6:46 PM

We need to find ways around them. Reagan did it. Bush managed it. So can we.

Sounds like its time to infiltrate the Democrats (it’s not impossible, but probably too lengthy of a goal).

nobar on March 18, 2013 at 6:26 PM

Sometimes I think I should run for statewide office here in The People’s Republic of Illinois as a Democrat. It would be too easy.
Just spew Communist-lite talking points, make emotional arguments based entirely on anecdotes, and exploit the economic illiteracy of the average Dem voter.

Spending that which you do not possess is immoral. Thus your argument that moral societies who had spending problems were no such things.

Rome was moral for a time. It morphed. Is that not where Plato and others were prominent speakers? But how did they survive those hundreds of years? They began plundering their neighbors to sustain themselves. But they were not fiscally sane. If they were, they would not have been forced to keep going out to loot others to fund their society. The problem with socialism is, you eventually run out of other people’s money. Early Rome created its own wealth, later Rome spent other’s.

Funny how people like you only complain about conservative morals being shoved down throats but never liberal ones. Pretty much makes you a liberal doesn’t it.

The Notorious G.O.P on March 18, 2013 at 7:02 PM

BINGO! Futhermore, Portman just came out to the lovelies in support of gay marriage. Did the left embrace him? Did the gay community? Nope, read the twitter feed. They villified him as pandering and tokenism. Said he should have come out before he had a gay son.

I love the people who think if we suddenly switch on this issue the left is going to let us be seen as the party of tolerance. They will continue to write the narrative of us as racist, sexist homophobes.

Oh, but do tell us how we can’t have fiscal sanity without social con morality being shoved down our throats, social cons.

John the Libertarian on March 18, 2013 at 6:04 PM

Honestly, this is a losing tactic. Libertarians need social cons and social cons need libertarians if we are to have any hope of an electoral majority behind fiscal restraint. We have to stop attacking each other first, and focus on attacking the enemy first. The enemy knows social issues divide us, that is why they push them. We need to come to an accommodation with one another in order to fight the bigger threat.

This is my accommodation: I grew up in a christian conservative household. My own nuclear family does not observe but I understand the viewpoint. I believe in the First Amendment and the CC’s right to believe what they believe and mobilize behind what they mobilize behind. I welcome them in the fight for fiscal sanity. I back them in their Constitutional right to be free of onerous government regulation in living their lives according to their principles. I do not presume that CCs are “trying to shove their religion down my throat”, because by and large they are not. To the extent they dislike any particular lifestyle with which I do not have a problem, I am free to ignore them in full accordance with my own Constitutional rights.